Facebook poaches Google’s Senior Director of Engineering to head up silicon efforts

Facebook has appointed Shahriar Rabii, Google’s former Senior Director of Engineering, as its new Vice President and Head of Silicon, indicating the company’s intentions of furthering its position within the semiconductor market.

During his time at Google, Rabii held senior roles across the company’s Engineering division, helping the firm to launch multiple Silicon development programs and new products including Pixel Vice Core for ML.

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Prior to this, Rabii founded and led Arda Technologies for a period of five years – a chip design company that was then acquired by Google itself in 2011.

The move from Facebook again highlights the changing mindset within the industry as key technology players look to reduce their reliance upon semiconductor companies such as Intel and Qualcomm, instead supplying their own hardware.

The news, first reported by Bloomberg, comes after Apple similarly poached John Giannandrea, Google’s Head of AI and Search, earlier this year, who is now set to head up Apple’s Siri and AI efforts under a new combined division.